


Year of the Dog

by The_Button_Harlequin



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, Clueless Hannibal, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute Will, Dark Will, Dead animals, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Hannibal is Hannibal, I'm saying I love dogs in general, I'm saying I love the dogs, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Animal Abuse, Poor Will, Puppies, and his pants, and yet Hannibal spends his time in Will's clothes, are you blind, but certainly not by Will, but especially Will Graham's dogs, but not dogs, but not really, go figure, i think, it feels like it, showering with tiny dogs accidentally, smarmy Hannibal Lecter, talking about family yo, the hurting of animals will not be tolerated, the way road through the hearts of Will's dogs is the way to Will's heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:49:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4758800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Button_Harlequin/pseuds/The_Button_Harlequin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which: the road through the hearts of his dogs is also the way into Will Graham’s heart (and pants) </p><p>Otherwise known as: 5 Times Hannibal Lecter had to Spend Time with Will's Dogs and the 1 Time it Worked in His Favor</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: To get back into the swing of writing and things of that nature, I’ve decided to give some 5+1 fics my attention because I think they’re like little chapter stories but still wonderfully short and light on the actual plot. I dunno how this will work out, but have fun anyway with dogs and Hannibal being clueless

**_ Part I _ **

There was something about Wolf Trap air that was just _refreshing_.

Clean and cool with the heady tones of nature, there was no doubt in Hannibal’s mind that Will valued the location for more than just privacy. A variety of reasons to be sure, but the space was probably the most important.

“I imagine that your dogs must be very happy here,” Hannibal said, keeping out of the harsh sun by way of sturdy porch overhead.

“I like to think so,” Will replied, coming back onto the porch and handing him a glass of instant lemonade that was far too sweet for the psychiatrist, “there’s always enough room to run around and I make sure they eat every night."

Hannibal set the ‘lemonade’ on the porch rail beside him. “You make all your dog food from scratch, yes?”

Will hummed in confirmation, his eyes warm and soft at the sight of his dogs frolicking in the field. “Leftover cutlets from a butcher about half an hour from here. He lets me take them home at a fourth of the price every week and I tell him whenever there’s a puppy that can be adopted. His wife works for the animal shelter and they’re both half-way animal hoarders as well.” Will smiled ruefully, “I’ve trained every one of their problem case dogs.”

Hannibal’s eyes smiled at him, “None of your dogs were puppies when they came to you?”

“No, they’ve all been older and – _Sasha no._ ”

Hannibal’s head turned to where a long haired mutt was rolling around on the ground in something that was decidedly not earth. By his estimate, as of a few weeks ago it had been a small animal, now only a smelly pile of rot and fungi. He watched in fascination as Will marched over to the sorry looking dog where it whined pitifully and looked up at its master with big soulful eyes. 

“No, Sasha, you know better than to roll in dead things,” Will said sternly to Sasha, who was indeed covered and coated in dead offal and half dried mud, “Porch, now.” Sasha gave another long whine but did as she was told, dragging her head in shame with her long fluffy tail between her legs. When the dog reached the porch she stood at the top of the steps, looking appropriately abashed in the eyes of her miffed guardian. Will pointed to her and ordered, “Stay. I gotta clean this up before any of the others think that it’s a bright idea to roll around in dead raccoon.”

Hannibal watched Will go around the house, probably for a shovel, when he heard another whine come from the dog on the porch. He looked over to her and saw that she had turned his pleading eyes to him looking up from his feet, for what he didn’t know. He smelt the dead raccoon on the dog’s fur, saw where it clung to the long fine strands of hair and the mud that clumped it together with the rag weed trapped in between the substances like a dust bunny. Hannibal sneezed.

Sasha saw that as her cue to shake all the mud and dead raccoon off.

Hannibal’s arm came up just in time to protect his eyes and mouth but it couldn’t protect his suit or even his hair. He could feel where the mud and rot landed on him, ruining his suit and coating him with a stench not even he would tolerate. He swiped his arm towards the open field to dislodge any of the filth that he could and only succeeded in the wind flinging it right back into his face. Over his cheeks. His _mouth_. 

“Hannibal, what – Sasha did you do this?” Will’s voice spoke of very few treats in Sasha’s future, the dog once again whining in chastised sorrow. “Sasha. Hannibal I’m so sorry, she doesn’t usually do this, she’s just been antsy since the storm is closing in. God those clothes are ruined,” Hannibal opened the eyes he was not aware he’d closed to see Will’s cringe at the gentle touch he placed on Hannibal’s remarkably undamaged elbow, “I’ll pay for everything, Hannibal. Let’s get you into a shower before any of this sticks for good.”

Afraid that something might get into his mouth should he speak, Hannibal held up a hand to the profiler in the universal sign for ‘stop’. The European, with the self assurance that an American could only dream of, began to quickly and methodically strip himself down to just his silk boxers, Will’s eyes going wider at every article of clothing gone. It would’ve been so easy to embarrass himself were Will’s thoughts, and was glad of the terrible smells that kept everything under wraps. Once Hannibal was as naked as he allowed himself to be, in nothing but black silk boxers he gestured for Will to lead the way. If Will stared a little too long at the way the muscles shifted beneath skin and the barrel chest of his psychiatrist, it was only because he couldn’t imagine Hannibal in anything other than high quality cloth and terrible paisley ties. Really, that was the only reason. Really.

Once Will had stumbled his way through his own house to leave Hannibal safely in the bathroom, Hannibal heard the profiler clear his throat. “I’ll leave some spare clothes for you outside the door,” Hannibal heard Will say through the door, “Take as much time as you need. I have to clean up the raccoon and give Sasha a bath.”

With nothing else to hold him back, Hannibal blasted the water as hot as it would go until it reached an almost scalding temperature. Stripping himself of his underwear and folding it neatly on the closed toilet lid, Hannibal stepped into harsh hot spray. Keeping his eyes toward the ceiling so that he would not get refuse into his mouth, he closed his eyes, the feeling of disgust crawling on his skin slowly washing away under the downpour. Finally opening his eyes when the disgust was mostly away, Hannibal looked down for the shampoo.

The shampoo was apple scented and cheap on a little porcelain shelf of the bath, right next to a tiny sopping mass of wet fur and big brown eyes.

Hannibal stared at the little dog on the shelf next to the shampoo for a moment, wondering just why it was in there and why it seemed to be content to be under the near boiling spray, although that might have been something to do with the cooling of the water over the past few minutes. It seemed quite content just to lay on its side with it’s pink tongue licking its lips every so often, turning its relaxed brown gaze up at him. Just watching.

Hannibal blinked. Then, he took up the cheap shampoo and began to wash the dead raccoon from his hair, taking great care to get as much as he could to fall from his fingers. He picked out what he assumed was a little finger bone, yellow and brown from the decomposition, taking only a moment to look at it before setting it aside on the counter on a whim. After the first wash of his hair, Hannibal was about to begin on the second when the little dog yipped and hopped in front of him, wagging its tail and begging with his big brown eyes for something. Hannibal watched it for a bit, raising his eyebrow at the small dog at his feet, its gray fur dark and short but undeniably clean even for Will’s dogs. It touched a small paw on his calf, letting out a little sound of begging and tapped its paw against his calf again.

Squatting down in front of the little dog, Hannibal extended the hand without shampoo to see the name on the tag before the dog yipped and pressed its head into the shampoo in Hannibal’s hand, smearing the synthetic green gel all over its head and some of its small body. Its tongue was panting and pulled up into a smile while the curly, stubby tail was wagged back and forth so much it shook the whole dog’s body. Hannibal, finally gathering some clue as to what the little dog wanted, slowly reached out towards it and massaged the shampoo into fur. While he slowly shampooed the dog he flipped the tag on the collar and found its name to be, entirely unironically, Raine.

Leaving the soap suds on Raine, who was sitting quite happily at his feet, Hannibal took care of his hair again and managed to get the terrible body wash to clean him before turning to the “Beach Shore” conditioner and letting it go through his hair before he once again felt the small paw of Raine at his feet. All the suds of shampoo washed away, Raine looked up at him with those ridiculous brown eyes before Hannibal gave in and conditioned her coat for her as well, the doggy breath from her happy panting thankfully muted by the slowly lukewarm water.

As cleaned as he was going to be, Hannibal turned off the water and reached for the towel hanging nearby, drying himself off methodically and, at the press of a paw at his calf, Raine as well. Even as Hannibal stepped out of the shower and opened the bathroom door with the towel around his hips, he gathered the clothes Will had laid out for him. A hand on the doorknob, Hannibal left the door wide open and raised an eyebrow at Raine who situated herself on the bath mat and looked up at him with a curious look. 

“Are you going to get out?” Hannibal asked her, motioning towards the open door with the hand full of clothes. Raine tilted her head. Taking that as a negative, Hannibal closed the door and went about dressing and combing his hair with a spare plastic comb beneath the sink. Raine only left the bathroom when Hannibal did, a soft plaid shirt in green and gray with sturdy gray jeans that stretched over their current wearer like they wanted to hug every part of him in more places than he would usually deem appropriate.

Raine followed Hannibal’s grey socked feet to the front porch again, where Will was busy washing Sasha in a metal tub with practiced ease, speaking softly to her nonsense and periodic praises about how well she was doing in the tub.

Looking away from Sasha at the sound of the screen door closing, Will blinked, stared, and blinked again. “I don’t know what I was expecting but for some reason it wasn’t that.” He looked down at Raine who was settled against Hannibal’s ankle like she’d never been anywhere else in her life. “Did Raine sucker you into giving her a shower too?”

Hannibal gave his maybe-patient a wry look before settling against the porch railing, safely away from the shake zone Sasha had. Raine followed and once again settled down next to his ankle, laying down on her newly washed belly and calmly watching Will washing her pack mate.

“Your dog was already in the shower when I went it and I did not notice her until well into my washing,” Hannibal said. “Do you often allow your dogs to be in the bathroom?”

“Not all of them,” Will admitted, rubbing the doggy shampoo into the fur behind Sasha’s ears, “Just Raine. She’s always liked the shower and the rain outside, likes to take baths and get washed too. She can’t have all of them of course, it would dry out her skin too much. I usually have to let her near a window whenever there’s a storm coming, just so she’ll get some peace watching the weather come down.” 

Hannibal looked down at the dog in question, whose eyes were closed and was snoring peacefully. “Where did you find them all?”

Will was silent for a moment, thinking aloud when he looked at Sasha in her giant doe eyes. Speaking to Hannibal, but almost looking to Sasha like she was his guide through memories, he spoke slowly, gathering each memory as he went. “Sasha came to me during a thunderstorm a few years ago, with trash around her neck like a necklace made of garbage. I almost can’t remember where Lulu and Jojo came came from, they’ve been with me for so long. They were my first, almost…ten years ago, I think? They’re getting old, they don’t run around like they used to. I found them outside the FBI Academy in the trash bins looking for scraps. I’d heard about some janitors getting frustrated with all the clean-up and they’d started throwing rocks at them whenever they saw them. I just, I felt bad for them. It took me a few tries, but they came home with me on the same day I became a teacher, actually.”

“They were a marker of your life.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s the same with Winston too, if we’re going through dogs as milestones. I found him the same night Jack Crawford needed my help for the Minnesota Shrike case. He was just walking down the road, a leash trailing behind him like a torn cape, ignoring me until I had my leftover lunch in my hand.” Will smiled at the memory fondly, giving Sasha a fond scratch behind the ears for it. “Buster was a dog we found in a fighting ring, when I was asked to consult in a drugs bust case they just couldn’t pin down. He was so tiny then, not a puppy but not full grown yet either. It took me weeks to get him to calm down and adjust to normal life. He’s even still got some scars around his snout where a bigger dog bit him.” 

“That must have been very difficult for you,” Hannibal said, carefully observing the way that Will’s eyes clouded over at the thought of scars, “Did you find the masters of the dog fighting ring?”

“They might be getting the death penalty under advisement by an FBI consultant,” Will said lightly, motioning for Sasha to get out of the tub and dumping the water over the porch, “but you didn’t hear that from me.” 

Before Hannibal could further question him, Will continued speaking while drying off Sasha with a thick pink towel. “I found Georgie when I went to Louisiana to visit my father’s grave. My mother…she was there. She invited me to her house in Georgia. I went. We talked. We haven’t spoken since. I found Georgie there on the Georgia state line tied to the sign that said ‘Come Back Soon!’ like he was something that they had blithely forgotten. He was more than half starved and there was a point where I just, I didn’t think he was going to make it. He did though, he’s the most excitable out of all of them now after Buster.” 

Standing up from where a newly dried Sasha lay at his feet, Will looked over to Hannibal now, before turning to the small dog at his feet with a small smile. “Raine was the hardest one to catch. She would only make noise whenever it rained and would only hang around ponds and the stream by my house. At first I didn’t even think she was real until one day I heard her yelping and found her caught in some broken off fishing line about a quarter mile away from my usual spot. I fixed her right up, took her home, and that was that.” 

Hannibal looked down at Raine, still asleep and content to be so on her belly with her paws resting under her chin. “You love your dogs very much,” Hannibal said, turning away from Raine to catch Will’s eyes, holding them tentatively like one would hold the eyes of a skittish animal, “Do you believe that they are a holding place for the family that you believe you have yet to create?”

Will frowned and turned his eyes away, thoughtful. “My dogs are the only family that I can create,” Will said softly, “If I were to have a family now then it would all fall apart like an elaborate illusion.”

“And if you could have the family you have always dreamed of,” Hannibal asked unblinkingly, “what would it look like to you?”

“Two parents,” Will said without hesitation, before continuing on more carefully, “aunts and uncles, cousins and children with pets that they love and cherish just as much as they do each other. Happy and not worried that a serial killer hides in the minds of one of them. That they keep each other safe, protected, loved…”

Hannibal allowed Will to be absorbed into his own mind, watched the emotions shift on a tired face like different slides on a projection. Once Will’s face hovered around wistful and confused, Hannibal interrupted his silence. “You dream of a family unit without material possessions, only each other and themselves. Have you ever thought about a status for your family fantasy?”

Will shook his head. “Money comes and goes and can only be there for as long as you possess it,” he said, “Family is supposed to be solid, supposed to be infallible and worthy of each other and love each other. I’ve never believed a family who is happy is otherwise.”

Hannibal looked to Sasha, who licked Will’s hand to bring him out of his stupor. He knelt down next to her with kind eyes, petting her and giving a rough chuckle when she pushed him over onto his behind to lay down over his lap. Will obliged her and stretched out his legs more smoothly underneath her weight until he had his legs stretched out in front of him and Sasha half on him and half on the porch. She gave one loud _BOOF_ before settling back down. 

Hannibal saw the heads of the other dogs perk up and trot to the porch. “I believe that your dogs fit that profile quite well,” he watched Raine pick herself over and plop herself in between Will’s feet before closing her eyes again, “even if they are not human.”

“Especially since they’re not human.”

If Hannibal’s heart, that uneasy piece of humanity that he could never fully get rid of, gave a tight squeeze at the sight of Will surrounded by his companions, content and full of love, well, no one had to know. Even if Raine did give him a knowing look. She was just a dog, after all.

_**o~o~O~o~o** _

**So, thoughts?**


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of Will's dogs is having puppies and Hannibal needs to be there to make sure that she's alright at the end. Featuring: medical stuff but not really, puppies, Lulu the Mama Dog, some UST, Dark!Will, and Hannibal's whimsy.

**_ Part II _ **

There was something about Wolf Trap that was just _secure._

Even when the cars down the road made more noise than normal and the high school filled with its rowdy teenagers and idiot school boards that was situated only fifteen miles west of Will’s home, Wolf Trap felt secured in the arms of Mother Nature and nurtured by Father Time. It was one of the reasons, Will had told Hannibal, that he had felt a kinship to Wolf Trap that he hadn’t anywhere else in the state. Hannibal was inclined to believe him, if only because veterinarian hours didn’t exist in the early Middle Ages.

“Hannibal, you need to come over,” Will’s demands were more like begging than anything else over the phone, his breaths crackling over the line and shaky, “I know you have to work tomorrow but Lulu is going into labor _now_ and the vet isn’t going to be here until Monday and the last time she gave birth she almost didn’t make it.”

Hannibal stood in his kitchen, already putting away half chopped vegetables and pouring soon-to-be unsatisfactory broth down the sink. He spoke to the home phone cradled between his shoulder and his cheek, “The earliest patient I have tomorrow is at seven o’clock, Will,” a quick e-mail apologizing for his absence was sent to his early patients seconds later, “And I am a doctor that specializes in human medicine, not animal. I may even do more harm than good.”

“Hannibal,” and oh how sweet his voice was when it was so close to begging, “Lulu was scheduled for neutering only a few weeks before she got pregnant again, I know this is a lot and I know that I’m asking a lot, Hannibal, but I need you. Lulu, she was one of my first you know? And you’re the only one I know with any working surgical knowledge and I’m so sorry that you’ll probably be tired and angry tomorrow but I need her. Hannibal, please,” and oh it made Hannibal want to throw back his head in joy at the word even as he changed from his white button-up into the more casual clothes that Will had lent him but Hannibal had never returned.

“Hannibal, I need you.” Those were the perfect words.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Hannibal said as calmly as he was able, even as his blood rushed and he felt his heart speed up just a tick. He heard Will thank him and hang up, comforting the source of the pained whining on the other end of the phone.

Collecting his surgical bag, wallet and phone, he was on the road to Will only a minute later.

When he arrived to Wolf Trap it was to a disconcertingly eerie silence that was usually punctuated by the sniffling and scratching of dogs. It was only when he heard the sound of pained whining that he understood just how affected Will and the other dogs were.

Without knocking or expecting anyone to open the door for him, Hannibal entered with his surgical bag to see the house slightly dimmed by lack of lights. Flicking them on as he a needed, he spotted the other dogs laying down in a pile silently by the cold grate of the fireplace, warm enough in the summer not to be needed.

Following the sounds of distress led Hannibal to a large laundry room towards the back of the house. Will was petting a dog who could only be Lulu who lay on her side, her sounds pained and distressed, nested in at least a dozen towels on the floor of the laundry room. Will’s face was pinched and tight with worry, making soft cooing sounds that sounded more panicked than comforting.

He looked up at Hannibal, “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Hannibal knelt down and felt along Lulu’s belly where he could feel several puppies, Lulu growling lowly at him even as he ignored it. “Everything seems to be as it should be,” Hannibal said, leaning back to look at Will whose attention was entirely on Lulu, “The only thing we can do is wait.”

Will took a deep breath and nodded, leaning down to give Lulu a kiss on her snout. Hannibal sat with his back against the washer, legs criss-crossed underneath him to allow more room for Will and Lulu. He watched as Will tangled himself up in a mess of emotions that flicked through his eyes one by one: fear, worry, anger, sadness. All the while he kept cooing to his mutt, only relieveing his affection when the dog turned her head away from his stroking hand.

Will gave a shaky breath before leaning back against the washer with Hannibal, their shoulders brushing with every other breath. Nothing to do but wait.

Will nearly jumped when Hannibal broke the uneasy still between them. “What happened the last time, when your dog gave birth?”

Will’s frown deepened and he shifted on the laundry room floor. “She almost couldn’t push,” he said, “the puppies, they were just too big for her. The vet said there was tearing towards the end because otherwise she wouldn’t have lived.”

Hannibal nodded, “And the puppies? What became of them?”

Will sighed and dragged a tired hand down his stubble face. “I gave them to the butcher and his animal hoarder wife. They’re good people, ended up finding homes for most of them.”

Hannibal looked to Will. “Most?”

“A couple of them,” Will’s frown deepened, “they didn’t meet the mark.”

“What do you mean, Will?”

Will’s reaction could only be described as a snarl, his lips pulled back to reveal off-white teeth and pink gums. “Two of them were stolen from the shelter,” he tried to keep his composure, his wrath hissing through his teeth like the storm winds through trees, “and were later found dead in one of the volunteer’s trucks.”

Lulu seemed to sense her master’s anger and whimpered louder. Will came back to himself slightly, his fury cooling down to a simmer rather than boiling over. Will gave her another kiss behind her ear before leaning back and facing Hannibal’s general direction, the anger softened by his dog’s distress. “I hate people that hurt animals for no reason other than their pleasure.”

Hannibal casually brought his knees closer to his chest to hide his stiffening interest. He glanced to his surgical bag beside him, contemplating if it would send the wrong signal or not if he held it in his lap. Deciding against it, he asked instead to Will, “And what became of these animal killers?” Hannibal made sure to look directly at Will while he spoke, “Did you take action against them?”

“Of course I did,” Will spat, “Those were some of my family and they murdered them! I couldn’t just – I couldn’t let them think that behavior like that was acceptable.”

Hannibal couldn’t bear to blink in the fear that he would miss a crucial second of Will’s righteous anger. “And what did you do to them, William?” he asked softly.

Will’s eyes connected to Hannibal’s, thunderous and deadly. “I made sure that they knew that certain behaviors towards animals was unacceptable.”

“How?”

Will turned away then, his eyes going back to Lulu’s rising and falling side. His lips parted slightly, was about to say something, when his eyes widened. “It’s happening!” he said.

Hannibal tore his eyes away Will’s enchanted face to turn back to the dog in question, watched her tense her muscles before seeing a wet blob of amniotic sac and thin blood be birthed on to a hideous green towel. Will immediately picked it up and laid it in front of Lulu, who licked it clean until the blob gave a high pitched squeal of life. Hannibal looked to Will and could only smile at the sheer joy he saw, Will cooing to the puppy and whispering praises to old Lulu before sitting on his folded legs waiting for the next one.

Hannibal only watched as time and again Will would repeat the process of gathering a messy blob to hand it off to Lulu while the older offspring suckled at her teats. It wasn’t until the last one came, that anything but happiness was on Will’s face.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, staring at the little blob before Lulu let out a low _woof_ and handed it to her to be cleaned.

“What happened?” Hannibal asked Will, who still hadn’t taken his eyes off Lulu or her six new pups. Will only picked up a dark squirming, crying blob of fur and held it up to Hannibal. Hannibal’s eyes widened at the dark furred pup.

A two headed dog. Its twin heads squealed in equal anger at the world, squirming in Will’s hand as much as it was able to. Will set him (for the pup was male) down with his siblings and quieted down while both heads ate their fill.

Hannibal and Will stared at him before Hannibal moved beside Will, taking from his surgical bag a pair of latex gloves as he did so. Taking in the sight of Will distressed made Hannibal feel cold and icy, not the satisfaction he had once enjoyed. Putting that feeling aside for later, Hannibal explained as he took hold of an umbilical cord, “Lulu has not given her afterbirth in quite some time. I need to remove it if everything is to be as it should be.” Giving the cord a gentle tug, Lulu’s muscles tensed up and contracted once more before the placenta finally gave way and was released the same as the pups. Hannibal looked up into Will’s grateful visage with a smile he did not have to force. “All better now.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Will breathed, his own smiled threatening to engulf his face and leave nothing but curls and the smell of puppy birth behind, “Thank you for being here, Hannibal. It, it really means a lot.”

“You are welcome, William,” Hannibal said, peeling off his gloves to lay them inside out on an upturned laundry basket. Hannibal looked again and saw Will’s eyes softer than they had ever been, petting the new puppies with gentle fingers and tender coos. Lulu didn’t have any energy left and had promptly fallen right to sleep after the last of her new pups were born, her side rising and falling with a steady rhythm. Hannibal settled himself next to Will as comfortably as he could, looking down and watching the two headed puppy suckled beside his brothers and sisters, darker than the rest but just as noisy.

Will eventually settled back to just let the dogs be, leaning back on his hands until his fingertips were only centimeters from Hannibal’s thigh. They sat in comfortable silence, the noisy puppies the only things making sound in the house.

It was Will who broke the easy silence between them this time. “They look like Winston,” he said softly, leaning in just so towards Hannibal to send a whisper of breath across his ear, “I thought it was him but I wasn’t sure. Wild dogs come around sometimes and things just happen, but Winston must’ve gotten to her before I got him to the vet’s.”

Hannibal leaned into Will’s space just the same as Will did his until their faces were only inches from one another's. “Winston is a good dog,” he said just as softly, just as much minty breath and could hardly hold back the grin he wanted to give at Will’s slightest shiver, “He is smart and loyal to you. I imagine that his offspring shall be just the same.”

Will gave a slightly manic giggle, “Puppies again,” Hannibal deciphered from the giggles, “Oh god I’m gonna have to case the neighborhood again. Especially for that one,” Will nodded towards the two headed puppy. “He’ll attract all the wrong owners.”

Hannibal couldn’t help but agree. A dark furred two-headed mutt who would grow to be a rather sizable dog would undoubtedly bring all sorts of unsavory characters to him, just for the novelty of owning a two-headed dog rather than taking care of it.

Hannibal chose to ignore those thoughts for the moment as he questioned his maybe-patient, “What do you mean by ‘case the neighborhood again’? How many times have you done so before?”

Will’s body tensed up against Hannibal’s soft accusation. He stared at the soiled green towel before answering in a voice just as low as Hannibal’s but no where near as soft. “When I heard about the puppies being stolen and killed I became so, so, _angry_ I could hardly think. I stomped around the neighborhood until I found the low-lifes that owned the truck hours before the police did and I,” Will swallowed and looked away.

Hannibal breathed softly into Will’s nearest ear, “Go on.”

Will nodded but didn’t turn his head away from the open door to the house as he said, “I slashed their tires and keyed their cars. I broke into their house and when I saw that they were alone I beat them so badly that they had to be taken to the hospital. I set fire to their shed and I haven’t seen or heard from them again.”

Hannibal could feel his heart skip a beat, even as his voice was steady. “You found out that your family had been killed and reacted with righteous violence and anger.” Will nodded. Hannibal didn’t move from his close position as he whispered, “With all that you’ve seen now, murderers and predators tramping around in your mind, what would you do to them now?”

Will, achingly slowly and almost jerky in the motion, turned back to face Hannibal, faces only inches apart from each other. “I don’t know,” he whispered back, “I would do everything the same and nothing the same as I did before, as I can do now. Everything would be different and nothing would be. I’d be what I always thought I would be. But,” Will looked away then, looked down at Lulu and her puppies, eyes stopping on the two-headed one again, “I wouldn’t be allowed to again. The puppies and the dogs, they don’t have anyone to take care of them. Jack would know that it was me, Alana would know that it was me, _you_ would know it’s me. I would be an animal and I wouldn’t be here anymore.”

Hannibal’s mouth soured even as he said the words, “Chilton would have his way with you whenever he wanted. All the thoughts and secrets in your head for his fumbling hands to grasp and twist anyway that suited him.” Will shivered and nodded.

Hannibal would say that it was Will moving in closer to him and Will would say that it was Hannibal moving, but they would both know that it was a mutual decision to lean closer, closer, _closer_ until

“ _Aaaawwwwoooooooooo_!” Will twitched and turned to look back at the puppies, eyes wide and blown with flushed cheeks. Hannibal suspected he was in a similar state and could only curse the mutts for their poor sense of timing, even if it was a rather impressive howl for a first time.

“It’s the two-headed one!” Will whispered, even as the tiny puppy once again gave its twin howls and they echoed like tinny demons in the laundry room. It was both mesmerizing and blood chilling to think about what the sounds that tiny puppy would make eventually once full grown. If it became full grown.

Hannibal released his fit of whimsy before he could stop it. “I would like to have that one, if I may,” Hannibal said.

Will whipped his head back to his psychiatrist, eyes wide, “What? Really?”

 _Too late_ , Hannibal thought, and continued, “I have a steady, time manageable job with stable income and a large house with a sizable yard.” Hannibal carried Will’s eye contact into his little speech, “It would be easy enough to move my schedule around to walk him two or three times a day. I gather that you wouldn’t be opposed to allowing me to bring him once or twice a month in order to be sociable towards other dogs and people.”

Will gaped at him for just a moment before closing his mouth and nodded like a floppy toy, curls bouncing with every motion. “Yeah, yeah of course! I just didn’t think you were the type to own a dog. Although,” Will gave a knowing smirk, “if it’s you then only an unusual dog for an unusual man will do.”

Hannibal gave a wry smile in return. “Nothing but the most beautiful that comes from the most beautiful will do.”

Hannibal counted Will’s blush as a victory and finally leaned back to watch his new charge. It would take months before Hannibal could finally take the puppy home, giving him plenty of time before then to puppy-proof his house and learn useful training techniques from Will so that his beautiful (and expensive) home could remain in one piece.

They settled back in another silence, this one more situated between a flirtatious tension and awkward misses. Once again it was Will that broke the silence.

“Hannibal,” he asked, a sudden confused twist to his brows, “Does a two-headed dog count as one puppy or two?”

Hannibal elected to ignore him in favor of giving his new dog a knowing look.


End file.
